LIVE SCORE
https://umb.cuesco.net/competition/liveScore?idx=178#content
SOOP STREEMING & MORE
https://billiards.sooplive.co.kr/moments/match
OFFICIAL RESULTS & INFORMATION
https://www.umb-carom.org/PG344L1/Union-Mondiale-de-Billard.aspx
Seoul, November 10th 2024.
He will turn sixty next year, but there is no talk of retirement. Jaspers loves his billiards too much to go sit on the porch. And he loves winning World Cups, as he did this week in Seoul for the 31st time, beating Tayfun Tasdemir in the final: 50-36 in 20/19 innings. If the new generation wants to take the crown away from this Dutchman, they will have to match his mental strength and professionalism. That’s a big ask.
Tasdemir and Jaspers were both over 2 average during the first half of the match, but they were scoring one’s, two’s and three’s. You felt something had to happen, and it did. In the 14th and 15thinnings, Jaspers ran 7 and 10. That was too much even for Tasdemir, and a few innings later there were handshakes. Another excellent tournament for the Turk, another World Cup for the Dutchman.
In a much-anticipated semi, Jaspers had to get past world champion Myung Woo Cho. He was the quickest out of the box with an early seven, but Cho came back with a run of 11 when he was trailing, to turn 43-29 into 43-40. A three and a four sealed the deal for Jaspers.
The other semi saw Jun Tae Kim take a big lead when he was on 22 after six innings. Tasdemir held on and the new Korean world record holder appeared to freeze in the home stretch. The Turk took full advantage and finished brilliantly with five and six in the last two innings: 50-48 in 28.
Seoul, following Veghel, was another exceptional World Cup tournament. The grand average for the last 32 players was 1.646, slightly better even than Veghel. The 2024 World Cups have been won by Quyet Chien Tran (Bogota), Duc Minh Tran (Ho Chi Minh), Jung Han Heo (Ankara), Dick Jaspers (Porto), Quyet Chien Tran (Veghel) and Dick Jaspers (Seoul).
The best match in Seoul was played by Jun Tae Kim: 40 in 8.
The high run was made by Jun Tae Kim: 28 (equals the world record).
The best individual average was played by Van Ly Dao: 2.214.
In the race for the Overall World Cup win of 2024, Jaspers has closed the gap with Quyet Chien Tran. Both are now on 248 points, and one of these two will take the extra UMB prize of 30.000 Euro. Second place wins 15.000, third place wins 10.000. There is one more event to be played: Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, from 1-7 December 2024.
UMB.
Seoul, November 9th 2024.
The final day of the Seoul World Cup will be a battle between four of the best players in the world: Jun Tae Kim, Tayfun Tasdemir, Myung Woo Cho and Dick Jaspers. Three of them are current or former world champions, the fourth has just run a historic 28.
You could say that the absence of Quyet Chien Tran in the semi’s is a half-surprise. We don’t see the Vietnamese master lose very often these days. Let’s take a quick look at the quarterfinals:
Tayfun Tasdemir books a relatively easy win over Eddy Merckx: 50-22 in 33/32. That’s all in a day’s work for the Turk, and a very rare bad day at the office for the Belgian.
Jun Tae Kim beats Quyet Chien Tran 50-33 in 25/24, and in doing so, he keeps the race for the Overall World Cup of 2024 interesting until the last event, next month in Egypt. Another win, here in Seoul, would have put Tran out of reach.
Myung Woo Cho uses only 18 innings to beat another former world champion, Phuong Vinh Bao: 50-36 in 18/17. Cho is at the top of the food chain right now, but Bao has certainly not fallen into a black hole since his 2023 world title. He is consistent and strong.
Dick Jaspers has a lot of respect for Martin Horn’s abilities, but he usually beats him. This time was no exception: 50-35 in 27.
The crucial match in the round of 16 was the one between Myung Woo Cho and Jung Han Heo. Cho ran a 21 in the second inning and Heo responded with 12! There was some very expert defending going on in the second half of the match, so 16-22 in 3 turned into 50-49 in 27. Worth to watch back, that match.
The first semifinal tomorrow (Jaspers – Cho) will start at 13.00 local time, that is 05.00 in Western Europe. The match between Tasdemir and Kim will follow at 15.30 (07.30). It’s all available on Soop.
Seoul, November 8th, 2024.
There was much to look back on, at the end of the Seoul World Cup Friday. But nothing had people talking more than Jun Tae Kim’s run of 28, equaling the world record held by Komori, Ceulemans, Forthomme and Caudron. Kim was on 12 after 7 innings in his match with Glenn Hofman when he ran 28 and out. A little slice of luck helped along the way, but the run itself was no less majestic for it, and the final point was brilliant, played almost casually. Jun Tae has written history.
Here are the group results from Friday:
Group A. Solid performance by Jaspers, Morales joins him in the last 16. Choi started really well but he lost the key match to Morales. Bury continues to slip.
Group B. Quyet Chien Tran never in danger, three wins. Forthomme second, end of the line for Jeong who played so inspired yesterday. Seo can’t make an impression.
Group C. Two Turks battling for second place behind world champion Myung Woo Cho. Kiraz is a level above his countryman Alp. Park ends fourth.
Group D. Classic group of Death. Hofman and Legazpi on a superb level (2.200 and 1.944) but they are both out. Jun Tae Kim (world record high run 28) and Haeng Jik Kim advance.
Group E. Two more very strong qualifiers: Eddy Merckx with 2.418 and Van Ly Dao with 2.387. It was all too much for B.Y. Lee and Blomdahl.
Group F. Strong group, hard fights. Martin Horn and Peter Ceulemans both on 5 points, good averages for Marco Zanetti and Hoan Tat Nguyen, but they are out.
Group G. Three solid wins for Tayfun Tasdemir, Jung Han Heo joins him in the K.O. stage. Song and Karakurt are out.
Group H. The two best in average, Bao and Sidhom with 1.774 and 1.720 respectively, advance to tomorrow. End of the road for Jeong and Kang.
Saturday:
Myung Woo Cho – Jung Han Heo
Phuong Vinh Bao – Peter Ceulemans
Dick Jaspers – Haeng Jik Kim
Martin Horn – Sameh Sidhom
Tayfun Tasdemir – Roland Forthomme
Eddy Merckx – Daniel Morales
Jun Tae Kim – Van Ly Dao
Quyet Chien Tran – Tolgahan Kiraz
UMB.
Seoul, November 7th 2024.
We remember him from his fine play in the 2023 Seoul World Cup, where he reached the semifinal. This year, he is on his way again: Ye Sung Jeong was first in line to qualify for the main draw, with two wins and an impressive 2.500 average.
The musical chairs left several players with famous names disappointed. Hong Chiem Thai, Nikos Polychronopoulos, Sergio Jimenez, Berkay Karakurt and Thanh Luc Tran all missed out. Bury and Legazpi were very convincing. Glenn Hofman, with a win and a draw, was the last of the group winners to advance by right. The best numbers two, who also advance, were Ahmet Alp, Roland Forthomme and Wan Young Choi.
Here are the day’s winners:
Ye Sung Jeong 4 – 2.500
Jeremy Bury 4 – 1.860
Ruben Legazpi 4 – 1.777
Beom Yeol Lee 4 – 1.739
Hoan Tat Nguyen 4 – 1.666
Omer Karakurt 4 – 1.666
Sung Il Jeong 4 – 1.454
Ja In Kang 4 – 1.454
Hyun Il Song 4 – 1.194
Peter Ceulemans 3 – 1.632
Van Ly Dao 3 – 1.428
Glenn Hofman 3 – 1.403
Ahmet Alp 3 – 1.428
Roland Forthomme 3 – 1.176
Wan Young Choi 2 – 1.613
These fifteen players will join the fourteen seeds and the three wildcards in the main draw. The leader in the 2024 World Cup race, Quyet Chien Tran, finds himself in a group with Roland Forthomme, Ye Sung Jeong and Chang Hoon Seo. World number one Dick Jaspers is up against Jeremy Bury, Daniel Morales and Wan Young Choi.
Watch it all on Soop.
Seoul, November 6th 2024.
Asia is still going strong in the Seoul World Cup. No fewer than seven of today’s group winners were Koreans, three were Vietnamese. Sung Il Jeong and Wan Young Choi were the best: they qualified for the Q stage with four points and 1.750. Not too shabby! Jeong also recorded the day’s high run: 16.
It was a tough day for the Spanish-speaking billiard community. They lost several of their aces, such as Alexander Salazar, Huberney Catano, Jose Miguel Soares and Jose Juan Garcia. Hugo Patino and Sergio Jimenez are still in the race though. Alessio D’Agata escaped with a win and a loss. Hyuk Jun Son advanced as best number two.
Here are today’s group winners:
Sung Il Jeong 4 – 1.750
Wan Young Choi 4 – 1.750
Van Ly Dao 4 – 1.590
Viet Hoang Minh Thon 4 – 1.590
Ahmet Alp 4 – 1.489
Chi Yeon Cho 4 – 1.458
Turgay Orak 4 – 1.372
Ja In Kang 4 – 1.346
Hoan Tat Nguyen 4 – 1.320
Sergio Jimenez 4 – 1.296
Hyun Il Song 4- 1.272
Hugo Patino 4 – 1.250
Beom Yeol Lee 4 – 1.206
Arnim Kahofer 4 – 1.186
Myeong Gyu Oh 4- 1.111
Alessio D’Agata 2 – 1.264
Tomorrow, we’ll see players like Forthomme, Polychronopoulos, Bury, Jorissen, Legazpi, Ceulemans and others at the table.
All matches are streamed on Soop. Full results are available on the websites of Five & Six and the UMB.
Seoul, November 5th 2024.
The qualification stages in a Korean World Cup are tough. In todays’s PPQ round, many players stumbled and some fell. The bad news: it gets more difficult with each passing day. Chi Yeon Cho and Ataberk Cergez were the best, with two wins and 1.363 and 1.276 respectively. Good players like Hoan Tat Nguyen, Ronny Lindemann, Tobias Bouerdick, Tatsuo Arai, Emrullah Basegmez and former world champions Jef Philipoom and Ryuuji Umeda are out of the tournament.
Alexander Salazar from Columbia recorded an excellent 1.714, but he had to concede a draw. Thankfully for him, three points was enough, as it was for W.Y. Choi and Panaia.
Sung Won Jang advances as a best number two.
Here are the group winners:
Chi Yeon Cho 4 – 1.363
Ataberk Cergez 4 – 1.276
Viet Hoang Minh Thon 4 – 1.250
Tom Löwe 4 – 1.200
Sergio Jimenez 4 – 1.200
Muharrem Peker 4 – 1.176
Beom Yeol Lee 4 – 1.153
Mahmoud Ayman 4 – 1.090
Alessio D’Agata 4 – 1.034
Serfdal Bas 4 – 0.967
Hyeon Woo Kim 4 – 0.909
Alexander Salazar 3 – 1.714
Wan Young Choi 3 – 1.463
Maxime Panaia 3 – 1.526
Hyun Il Song 2 – 1.526
Duk Young Park 2 – 1.351
Tomorrow, players like Mehmet Goren, J.J. Garcia, Huberney Catano and others enter the arena.
All matches streamed on Soop.
Seoul, November 4th 2024.
Unsurprisingly, the first day of qualifications in the Seoul World Cup was dominated by the local players. Nine Korean hopefuls advanced to the next round (the ppq), and several did it with averages that would not look so bad in the main draw. Chi Yeo Cho and Beom Yeol Lee were the best, with 4 points and 1.578.
It was not the happiest day for the younger non-Korean talents: Joris van’t Zelfden, Luca Philipoom and Denizcan Akkoca went out, as well as French coming man Mikael Devogelaere. Jung Hee Lee and the seasoned Muharrem Peker got their tickets for tomorrow as best seconds.
Here are the day’s group winners:
Chi Yeon Cho 4 – 1.578
Beom Yeol Lee 4 – 1.578
Jef Philipoom 4 – 1.463
Sung Won Jang 4 – 1.363
Duk Young Park 4 – 1.363
Alexander Salazar 4 – 1.304
Takamasa Hagiwara 4 – 1.153
Yeon Cheol Jeong 4 – 1.111
Ataberk Cerkez 4 – 1.071
Nguyen Dinh Luan 4 – 1.052
Jae Yoon Won 4 – 0.967
Hyeon Woo Kim 4 – 0.923
Jin Woo Heo 4 – 0.923
Myeong Gyu Oh – 0.909
Alessio D’Agata 4 – 0.869
Volkan Goksu 4 – 0.612
All matches are streamed on Soop. Full results are available on the websites of Five & Six and the UMB. The time difference between Seoul and Western Europe, depending on DST in your country, is 8 hours.
UMB.
Seoul, November 3rd 2024.
Veghel is only just behind us, and already we are looking forward to Seoul. The Korean World Cup will be played from 4 – 10 November, in the Gangseo-gu district of the country’s capital city. The 2024 cycle will be completed in December, with the seventh event in Sharm El Sheik.
The UMB has seeded the following players for Seoul: Dick Jaspers, Quyet Chien Tran, Myung Woo Cho, Jun Tae Kim, Eddy Merckx, Martin Horn, Tayfun Tasdemir, Phuong Vinh Bao, Sameh Sidhom, Jung Han Heo, Marco Zanetti, Torbjörn Blomdahl, Haeng Jik Kim and Tolgahan Kiraz. The local wildcards went to Chang Hoon Seo and Joong Kun Park, the UMB/CPB wildcard went to Daniel Morales.
In the race for the Overall World Cup of 2024, Quyet Chien Tran is in the lead, with world number one Dick Jaspers as his main chasing rival.
Podium Seoul World Cup 2023
The tables in Seoul are Hollywood, the cloth is ClassOne B2 Black, the balls are Dynaspheres. The usual ranking points are at stake: 80-54-36-26-18-10. Qualification players will be faced with a tough task: the early rounds in Korea are notoriously difficult to survive.
On the players list, among many others: Birol Uymaz, father and son Philipoom, the Karakurt brothers, and all the new-generation Vietnamese stars that have done so well this year: Hong Chiem Thai, Duc Minh Tran, Thanh Luc Tran and Tran Thanh Tu Nguyen.
There’s no doubt that established names like Jeremy Bury and Nikos Polychronopoulos will try hard to regain a seeded position.
Eddy Merckx should get a special mention: he won World Cups on Korean soil in 2014, 2018, 2019 and 2023. Quite a statistic!
All matches will be streamed by Soop. Full results can be found on the websites of Five & Six and the UMB.
